Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex

"A fine addition to the Crash series"

Crash Bandicoot: the Wrath of Cortex is Crash’s 6th outing total on Sony’s boxes, with this being the first to be developed entirely for the PS2. Although many of you will be expecting groundbreaking graphics and new age technology, the developers have stayed faithful to the original 3Dish backgrounds, as it’s predecessors, which may cause a bit of alarm amongst some of you. In fact, the original developer, Naughty Dog, has severed its ties with the Crash Franchise and has decided to turn to other things. Deciding not to retire the character, Sony turned to Traveller’s tales, a lesser-known developer whose work includes Toy story and Theme Park. And this sets the scene for Crash’s first of hopefully many outings on the PS2.

When I first heard that this game was in development, I immediately had visions of a game that looked like Sonic Adventure or Mario 64. Total 3D environments and non-linear gameplay are the cornerstones of expectations in video games today. Unfortunately, with sticking to it’s predecessor’s style, Travellers Tales have created a game that is very linear. In fact from the first level onwards you’ll wonder whether there will be another way to complete it and usually you’ll find that there is not. Although it is linear, the levels can take a while to beat if you are willing to be thorough. You must destroy all the crates you can, collecting apples, and in the end you will be rewarded with a gem that can access secrets, which will always bring you booting up the PS2 to find that last crate. There is still plenty to do after you complete the level too. You will gain access to the ‘Time Trial’ mode, which takes a lot of practice to beat, which leads to yet more secrets. Crash 5 is packed with them, and all need to be obtained in order to get that satisfying 100% Completion.

A new way of playing Crash has been developed now. Crash has by far more moves in Crash 5 than he had in any of the games before. Some are required to beat the end of world bosses, and gaining these skills by completing specific tasks in each level means that it’s the only way to complete a level. Some people call this frustrating. I call it brilliant (I remember Mario64 having a similar system). As I said previously, the majority of the levels in Crash 5 are linear, however, some levels are special and require Crash to do a myriad of special tasks. Think riding around in a sphere and flying a small plane. Innovative little things like this made Crash 5 a joy to play. Although there are only a few of these levels which is a bit annoying, they are fun enough to warrant many more tries at them, and make it a joy to play.

As I’ve mentioned, Crash 5 is far from perfect, visually and looks a tad cartoonish (As it should be really). If you want an idea what the game looks like, play Crash 3 and think of that game with smoother and crisper graphics. Of note is the deaths of Crash-they are quite funny and it’s worth dunking him in the icy waters just to witness the hilarity. Fun touches like that are a rarity and just gave this game a certain ‘Sparkle’ that makes it so good. The bosses, although fun are actually a pain to defeat and the camera is hardly forgiving in this instance. In fact, the camera is the ‘Thorn’ in crashes side throughout the game. Crash 5 needs a button that centres the camera, as it is frighteningly hard to control crash at some times and more often than not, you’ll fall in the trap that you could have easily avoided. This is compensated somewhat by the large number of checkpoints, and the load times between Crash sleeping with the fishes and restarting at the last point are quick which can lead to continuous gameplay with only a few seconds wait. This brings me onto another brief point: the loading times of some levels are abysmal, and this game hasn’t got groundbreaking graphics, has it.

After playing Crash to the limit, I can safely say that traveller’s tales did an above average job in transforming the wily marsupial to the 128bit system. The graphics are no masterpiece and it has it’s faults, and perhaps naughty dog could have done better, but it Is fun enough and long enough to warrant am immediate purchase for all those platform fans out there, and I hope that another will come out soon.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/31/02, Updated 03/05/02